Word: acupuncturist
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...pilgrim in the forest of alternative cures can wander a long, strange way. Once you've set foot there -- if only to see a state-licensed acupuncturist upon your doctor's recommendation -- you may find yourself lost in the wild thicket on the fringe. Alternative medicine is a subculture. Its disparate practitioners know one another, attend the same holistic seminars, frequent the same bookshops. The acupuncturist will suggest that you see a shiatsu person he knows on the other side of town. The shiatsu masseuse will encourage you to buy certain herbs. Before you know it, you've suspended disbelief...
Energy is a big theme in alternative healing, but it has no real equivalent in conventional medicine (except for the fact that all living things generate weak electromagnetic fields). "Unseen, unmeasurable energy has been observed by many cultures throughout history," says William Anderson, an acupuncturist in Chicago. "In India they call it prana. In the Soviet Union, bioplasm. Some call it life force...
Some medical research is attempting to translate the workings of alternative medicine into something doctors can comprehend. Research has shown, for instance, that an acupuncturist's needles stimulate nerve cells to release endorphins, powerful opiate-like substances that relieve pain. Homeopathic remedies have been found effective for influenza, headache and allergies in numerous medical studies conducted in Europe. Meanwhile, herbs used in Chinese and Indian medicine have been shown to contain some of the same active ingredients found in conventional drugs...
...because you'll have withdrawal symptoms") and taking an herbal remedy called feverfew. For a man suffering from ulcers, he explores sources of stress -- a job relocation, an impending divorce -- and suggests sessions with a hypnotherapist "to see if there are unresolved issues." He sometimes refers patients to an acupuncturist, and even a few to a Native American shaman, though he draws the line at crystal therapy. Weil also knows when to send a patient with chest pains to the hospital for emergency surgery...
...naps between appearances, disdains pressing the flesh and finds the business of vote getting "unbearable." But when the normally taciturn Yitzhak Shamir mounts a campaign podium, he plays the crowd's emotions with the precision of an acupuncturist. "I heard about the problems that you are struggling with every day, the stones and the Molotov cocktails," he shouts at 800 Likud loyalists gathered in a shopping mall on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem. As his lips produce the sound, his fists become the fury, chopping the air and pounding the lectern. "Those who are trying to throw...